Singularly enough, it is very difficult for the voice to “go flat” on the bigotphone.  Then, not content with these popular songs we inaugurated a dance.  Now could be seen the beautiful and accomplished Miss Peregrine doing the light fantastic round the stone floor of the hall to the tune of “See me dance the polka”; then, too, the stately Mrs. Peregrine insisted on our playing “Sir Roger de Coverley,” and it was danced with that pomp and ceremony which such occasions alone are wont to show.  None of your “kitchen lancers” for us hamlet folk; we leave that kind of thing to the swells and nobs.  Tom Peregrine alone was baffled.  Whilst his family in general were bowing there, curtseying here, clapping hands and “passing under to the right” in the usual “Sir Roger” style, he stood in grey homespun of the best material (I never yet saw a Cotswold man in a vulgar chessboard suit), and as he stood he marvelled greatly, exclaiming now and then, “Well, I never; this is something new to be sure!” “I never saw such things in all my life, never!” He would not dance; but, seizing one of the bigotphones, he blew into it until I was in some anxiety lest he should have an apoplectic fit I need scarcely say he failed to produce a single note.

Thus our Yuletide festivities passed away, all enjoying themselves immensely, and thus was sealed the bond of fellowship and of goodwill ’twixt class and class for the coming year.

Whilst the younger folks danced, the fathers of the hamlet walked on tiptoe with fearful tread around the house, looking at the faded family portraits.  I was pleased to find that what they liked best was the ancient armour; for said they, “Doubtless squire wore that in the old battles hereabouts, when Oliver Cromwell was round these parts.”  On my pointing out the picture of the man who built the house three hundred years ago, they surrounded it, and gazed at the features for a great length of time; indeed, I feared that they would never come away, so fascinated were they by this relic of antiquity, illustrating the ancient though simple annals of their village.

I persuaded the head of our mummer troop to write out their play as it was handed down to him by his predecessors.  This he did in a fine bold hand on four sides of foolscap.  Unfortunately the literary quality of the lines is so poor that they are hardly worth reproducing, except as a specimen of the poetry of very early times handed down by oral tradition.  Suffice it to say that the dramatis personae are five in number—­viz., Father Christmas, Saint George, a Turkish Knight, the Doctor, and an Old Woman.  All are dressed in paper flimsies of various shapes and colours.  First of all enters Father Christmas.

     “In comes I old Father Christmas,
      Welcome in or welcome not,
      Sometimes cold and sometimes hot. 
      I hope Father Christmas will never be forgot,” etc.

Then Saint George comes in, and after a great deal of bragging he fights the “most dreadful battle that ever was known,” his adversary being the knight “just come from Turkey-land,” with the inevitable result that the Turkish knight falls.  This brings in the Doctor, who suggests the following remedies:—­